


Universal Appeal

by Vanny



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:38:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vanny/pseuds/Vanny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pickle Inspector and Snowman discover that they have much more in common than they could ever have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Universal Appeal

The man passing her on the sidewalk tipped his blue bowler hat and said, “Afternoon, ma’am,” just as if she was any woman having a stroll on a dark afternoon, as if the eye-searing green of her coat and the eight on her hat didn’t mark her as the central member of one of the most dangerous gangs in the city, as if her carapace didn’t shine with distant stars when she stood in the right shadows.

She’d seen Pickle Inspector before, of course. She took a passing interest in Team Sleuth, purely because Spades Slick took more than a passing interest in them. Anything that infuriated Slick that much was worth knowing about, though it went no further that. So she’d seen him, yes, was familiar with his figure and his preference for blue, but she’d never really locked eyes with him before. His eyes were small and deep and black, and there were terrible, exhausted shadows beneath them. Eyes like black holes.

It was one of those moments. It wasn’t like she’d known him for years so much as it was like she’d known him for eons.

“Afternoon,” she said in return, and inclined her head, narrowed her eyes in that smirking way she knew made men shiver. He just stared, smiling a weird, polite little smile; looked right into her skull and just smiled.

It was a realization that woke her later in the middle of the night: smiled like he understood.

She paid him a visit. It was three in the morning. He was awake, of course, still in his office, working away at some demonic-looking construction of silver and brittle Necco wafers, pierced and delicately strung on hair-fine wires. “It’s a puzzle,” he explained, not surprised by her appearance in the least. “I love puzzles.” She nodded her understanding. She filled her room with clocks to drown out the incomprehensible spin of the cosmos. He had to have something, too; his head was full of spirals birthing ever smaller spirals into the spaces between, incomprehensibly tiny and crowded and still filled with more spirals.

There was nothing attractive about Pickle Inspector. He did not bite her with his teeth, and he did not bite her with his tongue. He was softspoken and physically gentle to the point of weakness. He gave her nothing to hold onto. But suddenly, without having ever mentioned it, there was an understanding between them, and when she kissed him, she could feel the atoms inside her bones trembling.

He wasn’t forceful, but he knew to wind his arms around her then, to draw her zipper down her back, slow and careful and peel her dress away. He focused. He took it slow. He moved over her, a point and a wave at once, lingering almost infinitely. The edge of the desk was hard against her back, but she hardly noticed.

She considered shooting him and leaving the body for Problem Sleuth to wonder about. Not a punishment for looking into her and understanding so much as a security. If he was dead, he could tell none of her secrets. In the end, she simply left him, without a word, but also without a bullet to the brain. He couldn’t have asked for more, and he didn’t.

He just smiled his strange little smile and said, “Goodnight.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you think about it, Snowman is made of Pickle Inspectors at the molecular level. So why not ship them?
> 
> Maybe I should make a 'weird-ass pairings that nobody ships' collection.


End file.
